FACT CHECK: Trump falsely claims he is reducing prescription drug prices by 200% to 800%
“Drug prices are down 200%, 400%, 600%. Numbers that’s ever seen before... 200%, 400%, 600%, 800%. In some cases even more than that. It’s hard to believe.”
— President Donald Trump at White House event, October 17, 2025
President Donald Trump made a mathematically impossible claim during a White House event last week, asserting that he is reducing prescription drug prices by 200% to 800%, figures that experts say have no basis in reality.
The Mathematical Impossibility
Trump’s claim violates fundamental mathematical principles. A 100% reduction in drug prices would mean prices drop to zero. Any reduction exceeding 100% would require that pharmaceutical companies pay consumers to take medications, rather than the other way around.
Geoffrey Joyce, who leads health policy at the Schaeffer Center at the University of Southern California, characterized Trump’s assertion as “total fiction”. Mariana Socal, an associate professor specializing in health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University, stated she finds it “really challenging to translate those figures into actual estimates that patients would encounter at the pharmacy”.
Context of the Claim
Trump made the statement on October 17, 2025, during a White House event announcing a new direct-to-consumer initiative for fertility medications. This marks the latest in a series of similar mathematically impossible claims the president has made throughout 2025 regarding prescription drug pricing.
In August 2025, Trump told reporters he had “slashed prices by 1,200%, 1,300%, 1,400%, 1,500%,” adding, “I’m not talking about 50%. I mean 14-1,500%”. In September, he claimed his “most favored nation” policy would reduce prescription drug costs by “1,000%” or more.
What the Administration Actually Accomplished
At the same October 17 event, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, provided a concrete example of a fertility drug price reduction from $242 to $10. However, this represents a 95.9% reduction—significantly less than Trump’s claims, though still substantial.
The Trump administration has implemented several initiatives aimed at lowering drug prices, including a “most favored nation” policy through executive order in May 2025, which seeks to match U.S. drug prices with those in other developed nations. The administration has also announced deals with pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, for discounted pricing on certain medications through the Medicaid program.
Expert Assessment
While experts acknowledge that Trump’s policies could potentially lower prescription drug costs, they emphasize that reductions of 30% to 80% would be more realistic—and still significant. Andrew Mulcahy, a senior health economist at the Rand Corporation, said that “a savings of roughly two-thirds on what we spend now for drugs seems in line” with research, though he cautioned that “the devil’s in the policy design and implementation details”.
Ric Iolito, a senior policy analyst in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that “the administration itself has limited authority to influence drug prices across the U.S. market”. Congressional action would likely be required for comprehensive drug pricing reforms affecting all consumers.
Pattern of Numerical Exaggeration
The drug pricing claim fits a broader pattern of Trump using inflated or impossible statistics. At the same October 17 event, Trump also claimed to have secured “over $17 trillion” in investments—nearly double even the White House’s own inflated figure of “$8.8 trillion”.
When CNN sought clarification regarding Trump’s drug pricing claims, White House spokesperson Kush Desai sidestepped the mathematical impossibility and instead affirmed that “Americans pay several times more for the same drugs compared to their counterparts in other wealthy nations”—a separate, though accurate, point.
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